Thursday, December 31, 2020

Among My Souvenirs

The year 2020 was like a drunken dinner guest who insults the other diners, spills red wine on the white carpet, breaks a glass or two, and lets no-one relax until he is frog-marched out the front door. Only then can everyone let go a great sigh.


The best on-line comment I read about 2020 was by a person who claimed he would not set his clock back to standard time in November because he didn’t want to give 2020 even an extra hour.


*


For me there were three moments of light amid the darkness of 2020:


Arsenal won the FA Cup;

The Rangers won the NHL draft lottery;

Joe Biden was elected president.


All the rest of the year seemed to be reports of death upon COVID death and the disastrous response by Trump and his dumpties.


I have retained one memento of the year. It exemplifies the deceit, the deception, the vainglorious chutzpah of Trump. It is a postal card that I (and, I am sure, you) received sometime last spring.


“SLOW THE SPREAD” is the plea on the address side of the card. And on the reverse side are pointers offered by the professionals at the CDC. For example:


“Listen and follow the directions of your STATE AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES”;

“AVOID SOCIAL GATHERINGS in groups of more than 10 people”;

“AVOID DISCRETIONARY TRAVEL ….”




Nothing remarkable here, you say? Correct. But what makes this mailing emblematic of 2020 is the large-type declaration on the address side:


PRESIDENT TRUMP’S

CORONAVIRUS

GUIDELINES FOR

AMERICA



The man who was screaming hoax in the spring was offering “guidelines”? This was in the same vein as his insistence that his name be on stimulus checks. Not his doing, but his vanity. 


But even worse than the name on the checks business was the fact that all throughout the COVID crisis Trump undermined the efforts of health professionals by scoffing at the very guidelines he supposedly came up with (and at those who proposed them). Listening to local and state authorities? How about rabble-rousing the yahoos to protest state mandates? No gatherings over 10 people? How many rallies did he hold with unmasked acolytes squashed together? How about that White House lawn congregation to introduce his Supreme Court selection? Must one suppose that all those trips to golf courses were necessary—not discretionary—travel?


338,000 (and counting) Americans dead from COVID-19—and the superspreader of bad examples and bad advice (Clorox, anybody?) still has not taken responsibility for the calamitous response to the pandemic.


*


Of all the COVID stories that appeared in the media there was one that stood out for me.


The headline:


Head of White House security office has his right foot amputated because of severe COVID-19 and is facing 'staggering medical bills,' his friends say*


The gist of the story:

Crede Bailey, who heads the White House security office, lost part of his lower right leg, including his foot, and a toe of his left foot during a months-long battle with COVID-19.

The article notes:

Dozens of top administration officials and people tied to the White House have contracted COVID-19, and President Donald Trump has consistently downplayed the threat the virus poses.

But here’s some ordinary Joe, not a politico, working for the government, put at risk by the flouting of the advice of professional health experts by the president and his obsequious minions, who created an unsafe working place. 


Nothing about that on a postal card! 


*


Go to hell, 2020!


***


* https://www.businessinsider.com/head-of-white-house-security-office-coronavirus-amputation-medical-bills-2020-12



Thursday, December 10, 2020

HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, the Prequel

Received a message in the email box today that Disney is planning a prequel of The Lion King. Now let me say first off that “prequel” is one of my most hated words; it ranks with another made-up word, “threepeat,” as a rank abomination. The word I most hate in the English language, though—because of what it sounds like—is “catsup” when used for the red stuff that you pour over your hamburger. It noses out “hashtag” for first place on the ugliness scale.

But anyway, back to “prequel.” It seems that every movie and TV producer is trying to keep their franchise alive by trying it out, no matter how silly it may be in the context of their original show. Example: Endeavour as a prequel to Inspector Morse. How could anyone believe anything other than that Morse was born full-grown as a gloomy middle-aged cuss?


Ruminating on this, I thought I might undertake a new endeavor of my own as a creator of prequels for classic texts. 


Thus we have:


HAMLET, PRINCE OF DENMARK, the Prequel


SCENE 1:


[The Queen’s room at Elsinore.]


The King: My prayers have been answered. The Queen has been safely delivered of a son. I shall name him Hamlet, after me. [Turns to Captain Shute.] I will celebrate with my troops. Go, bid the soldiers, Shute.


The Queen [aside]: I would it had been a girl. I’d have named her Ingrid.


SCENE 2:


[A room in the castle. Five years later. Hamlet playing with his toy soldiers. The Jester enters.]


Hamlet: Why do you look so gloomy? You are supposed to cheer people up.


Jester: I lost all my money last night at a game of cards with some of the court musicians.


Hamlet: Alas, poor Yorick.


SCENE 3:


[Two years further on. A hallway in the school. Hamlet walking aimlessly. Enter the Principal.]


Principal: What are you doing here, you young scoundrel? Why aren’t you in your class? Is it 2B or not 2B?


SCENE 4:  


[Ten years later. Ophelia’s room. Ophelia reading a letter.]


Ophelia: Doubt that the ocean is wet.

               Doubt that we never met.

               Doubt that the heaven is high.

               But never doubt that my love will ever die.


[Enter her father, Polonius.]


Polonius: What are you reading, Ophelia?


Ophelia: Oh, just a recipe for Danish butter cookies.


Polonius: Well, as long as it isn’t any of that so-called poetry nonsense of Hamlet’s. In my day we knew how to write—tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, or poem unlimited. Not that mushy June/moon stuff that passes for literature these days. . . . Oh, go into the kitchen and give cook that new cookie recipe. If it’s good, we might be able to put it in tins and sell it. It would be nice to get some new source of income.


SCENE 5:


[Four years later. A tavern in Wittenberg, frequented by university students.]


Students [drinking and singing]: 87 bottles of beer on the wall,

                                                     87 bottles of beer . . .


Hamlet: You know, there’s been one thing that has bothered me for the three years I’ve been here in Wittenberg: Which of you is Rosencrantz, and which of you is Guildenstern?


[Suddenly there enters a messenger, covered in mud from hard riding through the night.]


Messenger: Where is Prince Hamlet? I have come from the court in Elsinore.


Hamlet: I am Hamlet.


Messenger: Sire, I have some sad news for you—your father is dead.


Hamlet: Oh no! I can’t believe it. He was so alive when I last saw him.


Student 1: So sorry for you, Hamlet.


Student 2: He was a goodly man, in faith.


Student 3: He should have died hereafter.


Horatio: Wrong play, Scotty!


[The students all stand and raise their glasses high.]


All: The King is dead. Long live King Hamlet!


[Curtain.]









 

Thursday, November 19, 2020

The Body in the Librarah


The Body in the Librarah

by Agony Chrisper

 Chapter One


Scene: Dining room at Threshold Manor. Colonel Wellington Ambrose (Rtd) is about to crack open his breakfast egg.


Door swings wildly open and in rushes a maid.


Maid: Oh, Sir, Sir….There’s a body in the library.


Ambrose: What’s that you say? A body in the librarah? Don’t be silly, girl. There are books and bound copies of Country Life in the librarah. Not bodies.


Maid: But, sir, I saw it with my own eyes.  

 

Ambrose rings for the butler, a stout man with a stoical bearing.


Ambrose: See here, Webster, this silly girl says there’s a body in the librarah. Go take a look, my good man. A body, indeed!


Webster returns.


Webster: I’m sorry to report sir, but there is a body in the library.


Dolly Ambrose has entered as Webster was speaking.


Dolly: What’s Webster talking about—a body in the library?


Ambrose: Apparently so. You didn’t order one from Harrods by any chance, my dear?


Dolly: You know, Welly, that Harrods cut off our credit two years ago. I think you should call your golfing partner, the Chief Constable. It’s probably a police matter.


Ambrose: Righto. And you should send the chauffeur for your friend Jane Maypole—the one who solves all the crimes around here.


Dolly: You dismissed the chauffeur last month, Welly.


Ambrose: Then have her take a taxi.


An hour or so later.


Chief Constable: Because the body was clad in a silvery evening gown and open-toed, high-heeled shoes, the crime scene team have speculated that the body is that of a woman. 


Ambrose: A woman. Now that is a turn-up. Anything else you can tell me, Dexter?


Chief Constable: The money’s on foul play.


They are interrupted by a small, spidery woman in a flowery housedress, holding a brown handbag with both hands.


Woman: Indeed, Chief Constable. And I fear much worse is to come.


Dolly: May I introduce you to Jane Maypole, Dexter?


Chief Constable: How do you do, Miss Maypole. Your crime-solving exploits have preceded you. But why do you say that much worse is to come?


Jane: It reminds me of the time that Eleanor Bushville, the butcher’s daughter ran away from St. Runnymede with the seed salesman. She, too, had fingernails like the woman in the library—all bitten to the nub. Oh yes, that was a terrible event.


Enter a Detective.


Detective: Our first breakthrough, Chief Constable. One of the constables recognized the dress from a poster at the Hotel de la Mer—you know, at Beachhurst. It was advertising the arrival of a Lily Deshea as a dance instructor.


Chief Constable: Good work, Simmons. Now we know who the victim is.


Jane: Oh, but, Chief Constable, we don’t. Her fingernails.


***


Chapter Sixteen


One Week Later


Scene: A sunlit room at the Hotel de la Mer


Dolly: So, Jane, it really was about the fingernails.


Jane: Yes. A ballroom dance instructress would never chew her fingernails like that. That’s why I suspected a switch of bodies.


Ambrose: That is quite remarkable. 


Dolly: And it was all about getting old Mr. Robinson’s inheritance? With Lily Deshea out of the way, the daughter-in-law would inherit?


Ambrose: But why put the body in my librarah?


Jane: Now, that was the tricky part. But I remembered a school play in St. Runnymede which involved the switch of characters. That was what gave me the final clue.


Dolly: You are amazing, Jane. You and St. Runnymede!


The End


*

Obviously inspired by the television adaptation of Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library starring Joan Hickson as Miss Marple, with Moray Watson as the Colonel. I recommend the show--but I especially hope that you get to see the first twenty minutes or so, which, if not falling on the floor hilarious, are a wonderful send-up of the British county upper class and are certainly giggle worthy.





Thursday, November 12, 2020

Who's Your Team?

In a recent book review in The New Yorker, James Wood wrote of

professional soccer players crossing themselves as they run onto the field, as if God really cared whether Arsenal beats Manchester United.(1)

This statement led me, as an Arsenal fan, to wonder whether God preferred Arsenal or Manchester United.


So I got on the telephone to ask him. The late chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that “God has spoken to mankind in many languages”(2); so it makes sense that he can also be spoken to in different languages, and English works. 


Here, as on-line magazines like to say, is a lightly-edited transcript of our conversation.


Us: Hello, God, how’re you doing?


God: Busy, busy. You know the universe keeps expanding, so I got a lot more heaven to cover. For example, they just discovered that there are about 300 million “habitable exoplanets.”(3) Now I have to figure out how to populate them. I need some new ideas, since the homo sapiens template obviously is a failure. 


Us: I see. I imagine then that busy as you are you must have some sharp views about some things that James Wood cites in his review of T. M. Luhrmann’s How God Becomes Real:

Elaine prays for guidance about whether to take a roommate or move to a new apartment. . . . Stacy prays for a good haircut, and Hannah asks God about whom to date. . . . Rachel asks for help with how to dress: “Like, God, what should I wear?" 

God: See what I mean about homo sapiens? They’re so self-centered that they think the creator of the universe has to drop everything he’s doing and tell them what their hemline should be. 


Us: But, God, I imagine that’s not the worst of it. How about someone like Irvin Baxter?


God: Who’s he?


Us: He was minister at something called Endtime Ministries. He claimed that “premarital sex was the reason the coronavirus exists.”(4) He said the “coronavirus may be a privilege.”


God: A privilege?


Us: Yes, because supposedly you are using the pandemic as “awake-up call” to warn that “there is a much bigger judgment coming.”


God: Where’d he get that?


Us: He said the Bible.


God: Nuts!


Us: By the way, he died of the virus. Err, just to change the subject, I read that 

[m]any tried and true prophetic Christians said they heard from God this year that Donald Trump would win a second term.(5)

God: You’re joking, right?


Us. Nope.


God: Well, now I’ve heard it all! OK. I’m outta here. Got to see about those alternate earths. 


[Phone call ends.]


Us: Oh damn! I forgot to ask about Arsenal and Man United. 


Hmm. It says here in the Times obituary of Rabbi Sacks that he was great friends with George Carey, the former archbishop of Canterbury:

Their shared interests went beyond religion: They had a mutual passion for the Arsenal soccer club and occasionally went to games together.

Of course! How could they ever root for a team whose nickname is “The Red Devils”?






***


(1)  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/does-knowing-god-just-take-practice 


(2)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/09/world/europe/jonathan-sacks-dead.html?searchResultPosition=1


(3)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/science/astronomy-exoplanets-kepler.html?searchResultPosition=1


(4)  https://news.yahoo.com/televangelist-referred-coronavirus-privilege-died-034254209.html


(5)  https://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/2020/november/the-prophets-did-not-get-it-wrong-its-not-over





Sunday, November 1, 2020

Head in the Sand Trap

Mark Twain did not originate the famous quote “Golf is a good walk spoiled.” Who did is apparently still up in the air. Nevertheless, the sport can still serve as an excuse for wearing funny pants.


 *


I recall reading an article in which Alistair Cooke wrote about meeting an old Scotsman, who told him, “If it’s nae the wind and it’s nae the rain, it’s nae the golf.”(1) The British, Cooke wrote in another article, expect that they must overcome difficulty in their pursuit of a good score:

Most Britons, of whatever skill, have been brought up to regard a links course as the ideal playground, on which the standard hazards of the game are the wind, bumpy, treeless fairways, deep bunkers and knee‐high rough.(2) 

I am reminded of Robert Frost’s defense of rhymed  poetry: writing poetry without rhyme is like “playing tennis without a net.” If there is to be a sense of accomplishment, there must have been a obstacle to be overcome. Do you get a feeling of worth taking candy from a baby?


*


It doesn’t take great mental acuity to be a somewhat good golfer. You just need to have a handle on rudimentary arithmetic. You need to count to 18 for the number of holes you will play, to distinguish between, say, the number 7 on an iron and the number 9 on another, and, most important, to be able to count up to about 100, the number of strokes if you’re not having a good day.


Now, we all know that Jack Nicklaus was a quantum leap better than being a “somewhat good golfer.” Hall of Famer, in fact. But that doesn’t mean that he has surpassed the Sunday golfers in arithmetical proficiency. Commenting the other day on the death toll from COVID-19, he asserted, “I don’t think the deaths are a correct number.”(3)


Unless Nicklaus carries a diploma in epidemiology (that I am not aware of) around in his golf bag next to his putter, I must question whether his arithmetical skill allows him to reach the number 200,000. 


Why a news source would bother quoting a golfer on the pandemic is beyond me. What I do know is that if he added his golf score card with the same disregard for facts, he would be disqualified from any tournament.  


***


(1)  I recall reading that in The New York Times Magazine, but, alas, a search of the paper came up with naught. There are other sites that do mention that saying as proverbial amongst the Scots.


(2)  https://www.nytimes.com/1977/01/23/archives/great-golf-courses-how-britons-suffer.html?searchResultPosition=9


(3)  https://sports.yahoo.com/jack-nicklaus-hydroxychloroquine-covid-19-deaths-donald-trump-endorsement-000926255.html



Thursday, October 29, 2020

Three Christians

                          I                                                                                


Kelly Loeffler is trying to win election to the Senate seat she was appointed to earlier this year. Besides being at present the junior senator from Georgia, she is also co-owner of a women’s basketball team, the Atlanta Dream. The members of the team are campaigning hard for a candidate in the senatorial race—but it’s not for Loeffler. Indeed, they even refuse to mention her name.(1) The players are supporting the candidacy of Democrat Raphael Warnock. 




A third person in the race, a Republican like Loeffler, is Doug Collins.


Despite Loeffler’s disingenuousness and/or obliviousness (she has just denied knowing anything about Trump’s Access Hollywood tape), which is ripe for contemptuous comment, it is Collins that we focus on today.


According to Business Insider

At least a dozen images and videos of Collins wearing different Air Force uniforms have appeared on his Senate campaign's social media accounts.(2)

 It is strictly against military regulations if the advertisements do not make note of the candidate’s retired or reserved status and that the candidate in uniform cannot appear "as the primary graphic representation in any campaign media.” Michael Weinstein, a former US Air Force judge advocate general, stated that

Collins should have known better as a long-time military officer. . . .

What's particularly appalling is that we court-martial young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines for stuff that is 1% as bad.

Collins is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserves and has served in Iraq as a chaplain. 


Interestingly, our clergyman claims in an ad that he “will fight for you.” Is he going to heave Bibles at the enemy?



In response to Weinstein and his organization, Military Religious Freedom Foundation, the Collins campaign has claimed that the attack on his ads are an attack on “religious liberty.”


According to this Christian, then, it appears that the definition of “religious liberty”  is the right to violate the norms, standards, and regulations of the United States Armed Forces.


II


Is there anyone more hickish (is that a word?) than Mike Huckabee. Described on Wikipedia as “an American politician, Christian minister and political commentator, Huckabee, who thinks he should be president, was once governor of Arkansas and is the sire of the notorious liar Sarah Huckabee Sanders. 


The other day, MarketWatch reported that Reverend Huckabee gleefully confessed to a felony—ballot fraud:

Stood in rain for hour to early vote today. When I got home I filled in my stack of mail-in ballots and then voted the ballots of my deceased parents and grandparents.  They vote just like me!(3)

Only kidding, said Huckabee afterwards. 


Guess that’s what passes for Christian humor in the Ozarks these days.


III


Gen. J.H. Binford Peay III has just resigned as superintendent of the Virginia Military Academy. He had served in that post since 2003. An independent investigation into allegations of systemic racism at the state-supported military college has been ordered by Virginia’s governor, who said,

Diversity is a fundamental commitment. Without this recognition, V.M.I. cannot properly educate future citizen-soldiers nor live up to its values of honor, character and service.(4)

The Institute’s history has been filled with veneration of Confederate leaders and slave owners:

Buildings on campus are named for them, and freshmen have been required to salute a statue of Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, who taught at the school before the Civil War.

Although General Peay announced efforts “to update some of the school’s traditions,” he refused to sanction efforts to rename buildings which honor Confederates. And he refused to remove the statue of Stonewall Jackson. Jackson, claimed Peay, besides being “a military genius,” was “a staunch Christian.” 


Well, that probably excuses being a slave owner and a traitor to your country.


***


(1)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/sports/basketball/wnba-loeffler-warnock-blm.html


(2)   https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ally-accused-violating-rules-about-political-ads-in-uniform-2020-10


(3)  https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mike-huckabee-tweets-about-filling-out-dead-relatives-absentee-ballots-and-key-federal-election-commission-member-doesnt-find-it-funny-11603645576


(4)  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/26/us/vmi-systemic-racism.html